I don’t doubt that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti’s GDDR7 reminiscence helps it overcome the constraints of its slender 128-bit reminiscence interface. Nonetheless, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t totally repair the problem. In-game benchmarks give us the very best concept of how a lot of an issue the 128-bit reminiscence interface is, they usually clearly present that the problem was a lot improved.
A technical glitch prevented us from testing the RTX 5060 Ti at 1080p in Cyberpunk 2077, however with the decision set to 1440p and 4K, the RTX 5060 Ti outpaced the RX 7900 GRE and the RX 7800 XT, each of which have wider 256-bit reminiscence interfaces and extra reminiscence bandwidth. The RTX 5060 Ti’s improved graphics cores and sooner GDDR7 reminiscence speeds enabled it to tug forward regardless of this drawback in Cyberpunk 2077. It additionally trounced the RTX 4060 Ti.
At 1080p in F1 2024, the RTX 5060 Ti was barely forward of AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE earlier than it successfully tied at 1440p and 4K. The RTX 5060 Ti nonetheless holds the general benefit, however it notably dropped additional than the RX 7900 GRE when transitioning from 1080p to 1440p. That is probably because of the RTX 5060 Ti having much less bandwidth than the RX 7900 GRE. The impression right here is slight, however the points that the slender 128-bit interface could cause are extra evident in Far Cry 6.
Sometimes, if reminiscence bandwidth isn’t an issue, efficiency tends to scale linearly with decision. This implies most graphics playing cards are likely to have their body charges drop an identical proportional quantity when shifting from, say, 1080p to 1440p. Once we see one card dropping sooner than the others, it is usually an indication of a bottleneck someplace, and for the RTX 5060 Ti, that’s nearly actually its slender reminiscence interface.
In F1 2024, the impression of this was negligible. The RTX 5060 Ti misplaced 36% of its body fee when transitioning from 1080p to 1440p, whereas the RX 7900 GRE dropped by 33%. That is sufficient distinction to shut the efficiency hole between the 2, however not a lot else.
That is much more noticeable in Far Cry 6, the place the RTX 5060 Ti went from having a big lead over the Radeon RX 7900 GRE and the Radeon RX 7800 XT at 1080p to being slower than each at 1440p and 4K. From 1080p to 1440p, the RTX 5060 Ti dropped 22% of its efficiency whereas the RX 7900 GRE solely misplaced 8%. Each dropped a good bit when cranking the decision as much as 4K, however the RTX 5060 Ti remained behind.
An analogous state of affairs is observable in Returnal, the place the RX 7900 GRE tied with the RTX 5060 Ti at 1080p, however the RX 7900 GRE got here out on high at 1440p and 4K. That is once more probably because of the RTX 5060 Ti’s memory-bandwidth limitations led to by the cardboard’s slender 128-bit interface.
The RTX 5060 Ti was behind the RX 7900 GRE in any respect resolutions in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Name of Obligation: Trendy Warfare III, and this probably wasn’t a results of the restricted reminiscence bandwidth. The bandwidth constraints of the RTX 5060 Ti aren’t more likely to impede 1080p resolutions, which the efficiency within the different video games we examined helps—the RTX 5060 Ti is usually sooner at 1080p. As an alternative, AMD’s win right here is probably going attributable to higher optimization for AMD {hardware} in these two video games.